Thursday’s List of 13: Doing some thinking out loud…….

13) Winner of the Westgate SuperBook handicapping contest this season won $1.422M Sunday night, when the Colts beat Tennessee, edging two entrants who both had Tennessee in that game- those two guys, who needed Blaine Gabbert to cover the spread in order to have a shot at the big prize, both banked $409,000.

Imagine being involved in a game with a $1M swing and your side’s QB is Blaine Gabbert????

12) Over last three years, Pac-12 teams are 7-15 vs spread in bowl games.

10) Central Michigan and Texas were only college football teams not to have at least one offensive play of 50+ yards this season.

9) Texas 28, Georgia 21— Before this game Tuesday night, Texas mascot Bevo went after UGa, the Georgia mascot down in the Superdome, and that aggression carried over into the game.

Hard to tell if Georgia let down because they didn’t make the 4-team playoff. Tom Herman’s career record vs spread as an underdog is now 9-2-1.

8) Trailblazers won in OT at Sacramento Tuesday night; Portland’s Jusuf Nurkić came the first player since steals and blocks first became official stats in 1973 to have 20+ points, 20+ rebounds, 5+ assists, 5+ steals and 5+ blocks in same game.

7) Oft-injured SS Troy Tulowitzki signed with the Bronx baseball team; they will pay him $600K next year while Toronto pays him $17.4M a year for two years to play against them.

6) Texas Tech 62, West Virginia 59— This was a truly awful game; teams played hard, but they combined to go 8-37 on the arc. WVU was 18-32 on foul line in a 3-point loss— had to be a brutal game to ref— very physical, ton of missed shots. West Virginia’s guards aren’t good.

5) Maryland 74, Nebraska 72— Cornhuskers came in as the ranked team, left with a loss.

3) I’m guessing NFL teams generally dislike being on HBO’s Hard Knocks. Coaches hate distractions, and TV cameras are a pretty big distraction. Here are three ways teams can get out of being on Hard Knocks:

— They have a first-year head coach.
— They were in the playoffs in the last two seasons.
— They’ve been on Hard Knocks in any of the last ten years.

Taking those rules into account, only five teams can be forced into being HBO’s focus next summer: 49ers, Raiders, Redskins, Giants and Lions.

2) NFL TV ratings were up 5% this season, good news for the league.

1) Rough couple of days for people passing away, especially for 76-year olds:
— Tyler Trent, 20, the Purdue fan who was an inspiration to so many the last few months, passed away from bone cancer over the weekend.
— Wrestling announcer Gene Okerlund, 76, passed away after a lengthy illness.
— Daryl Dragon, 76, the captain in Captain and Tennille, passed away on Monday.
— One of the most underrated funny men ever, Bob Einstein, passed away at age 76. Einstein was a talented comedy writer- he was in Oceans 13 among other movies. His character Super Dave, a knock-off of Evil Knievel’s daredevil antics, made people laugh for years.